Unit 1    

In our kindergarten reading and writing unit, we build a strong foundation for lifelong literacy by focusing on foundational skills, vocabulary, and writing development. Students learn phonics through the Fundations program, which teaches letter formation and keyword sounds, and develop phonological awareness with the Heggerty curriculum through activities like rhyme and syllable work. Reading comprehension is built by reading books like Mrs. Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten by Joseph Slate and How Rocket Learned to Read by Tad Hills where students learn to identify characters and problems by asking and answering questions. Vocabulary is taught through explicit word instruction, fostering word consciousness, and book embedded instruction, using student-friendly definitions and activities like acting out words or drawing pictures. Bookworms and Geodes decodable books are used to build comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency.  The writing block introduces different tools, teaches students to write their names, and encourages them to use shapes to draw and label their pictures. To make practice fun, we use bear buddies to help students with reading skills and feel more comfortable in the classroom.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Self-Awareness

Unit 2 

Using Patterns to Read the World is a six-week Kindergarten unit that serves as a bridge from emergent literacy to foundational reading skills. The program is built on the Science of Reading, focusing on the explicit recognition and creation of text patterns to build reading confidence and comprehension.

This unit integrates several specific programs to deliver its curriculum. To build phonological awareness, students engage in daily, structured Heggerty drills that focus on sounds, rhymes, and syllables without print. For phonics and decoding, the Fundations program provides systematic instruction on letter-keyword-sounds, handwriting, and encoding. This learning is applied through Geodes decodables, which are controlled-vocabulary readers tightly aligned with the phonics skills taught in Fundations, ensuring students are truly decoding.

For reading comprehension and fluency, the Bookworms curriculum provides read-alouds and shared reading to build background knowledge and vocabulary. The unit also uses specific "pattern books" to teach predictable structures like repetition and surprise endings, which include Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? by Eric Carle, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury, I Went Walking by Sue Williams, Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins, Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino, There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow Lucille Colandro, Go Away Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberly, That’s Good, That’s Bad by Margery Cuyler, Good News, Bad News by Jeff Mack, Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? by Eric Carle, and Are You My Mother? P.D. Eastman. These books aid reading efficiency as students transition to full decoding. Ultimately, this comprehensive approach ensures that students can identify and use text patterns, apply known phonics skills, and use phonological awareness to decode and comprehend connected text.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Product Creation, Self-Awareness

Unit 1

Unit 1 offers a complete framework for fostering strong, independent readers and a genuine love for books. It skillfully combines explicit instruction, abundant practice, and effective resource use to ensure every student becomes a confident reader. Daily reading time follows a clear structure: "Listen and Learn" for shared reading and modeling, "Our Reading Toolbox" for direct strategy instruction, "Practice Power" for independent and partner reading, and "Share Our Stories" for reflection and discussion. This consistent routine helps students understand expectations and maximize their learning. A key focus is teaching students the difference between active, engaged reading — where they are truly making meaning—and positive behaviors, setting them on a path toward purposeful reading. Throughout this unit, students will learn to use key reading strategies to help them understand what they read.  Students will learn to summarize a story in their own words, focusing on the main idea and key details. They will use story mapping to help identify the characters, setting, problem, and solution of a story. This will help them remember the important parts of what they read.  Students will learn to ask and answer questions about the text before, during, and after reading. This active process helps them deepen their understanding of the story.  A rich vocabulary is essential for reading comprehension. This unit will equip students with the tools to understand new words and develop a genuine curiosity about language using explicit word instruction, book embedded vocabulary and semantic mapping using the books Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Pigeon Wants a Hot Dog by Mo Willems, How to Read a Story by Kate Messner, No David by David Shannon, What if Everyone Did by Ellen Javernick, Biscuit Goes to School by Alyssa Satin Capucilli and Be You by Peter Reynolds. The Bookworms reading program and Geodes decodable text will be used for instruction.  The curriculum also emphasizes explicit phonics instruction, utilizing the programs Fundations and Heggerty, to empower students as “Word Detectives” who can confidently decode unfamiliar words using letter sounds, blending strategies, and initial sounds.

The writing component of the unit focuses on foundational skills and the development of sentences and stories.This unit aims for students to be able to recall information to answer a question, recognize the features of a sentence, and understand that rules of grammar, spelling, and mechanics guide writers. Students will get ideas for their writing from their own experiences, and they will learn letter formation for lowercase letters via Fundations, as well as sentence dictation procedures, including capitalization, periods, and word spacing. They will also learn to read and write sight  words. The writing block activities are designed to help students apply what they've learned about letters and words to their writing. Throughout this unit students are taught to use "Helper Words" (Who, What, When, Where, Why, How) to add details and make their sentences stronger and clearer. They work in groups to build sentences and then practice creating their own. This unit introduces a "five-finger" method for planning stories. Towards the end of the unit students work to choose and work toward a personal writing goal.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Collective Intelligence, Self-Awareness

Unit 2 Reading

This unit will help students become readers by developing phonemic awareness and phonics skills while analyzing characters in stories. Using principles from the Science of Reading, students will learn to accurately and fluently decode words, enabling them to deeply comprehend a wide range of texts to address the grade-level standards: Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details in a plot mountain; Use illustrations and details in a story to summarize and describe its characters, setting, or events; Compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in stories.

To build vocabulary, students will have semantic mapping, explicit word instruction, and book-embedded vocabulary instruction through planned and specific read-alouds. Dedicated instruction on Tier 2 vocabulary will be a consistent focus. They will act as "story detectives," citing textual evidence to support their observations and differentiate between a character's external appearance and internal personality. The unit also transforms students into "author detectives," exploring recurring patterns in Henkes work, such as common character archetypes, relatable dilemmas, and repeated lessons, while making text-to-self connections. Throughout the unit, foundational reading skills will be reinforced through integrated Fundations and Heggerty activities, along with literacy rotations providing diverse reading materials and opportunities to practice decoding and encoding skills, fostering strong and fluent readers. Fluency work will continue as students practice new skills with decodable texts specifically aligned to the skills taught in the unit.

Students will hear, read, write and speak about read-alouds as part of direct instruction from the following books: Danny the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff, Pig the Pug by Aaron Blaby, Clark the Shark by Bruce Hale, The Pigeon Will Ride The Roller Coaster Mo Willems,  Betty Bunny Wants Everything by Michael Kaplan, Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall, The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig, Chrysanthemum, Chester's Way, Wemberly Worried, Sheila Rae the Brave and Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes. The Bookworms reading program and Geodes decodable books will be used to support learning.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing

Unit 2 Writing

Students will write using words and pictures about a time they did something.  As they zoom in on that moment, they will include an interesting beginning and ending, use transition words, and stretch a story across three pages.  Students will use their editing checklist to revise and edit their work and to fix up spelling, listen for the sounds of words, and to use parts of words they know to spell new words. Writers will bring many pieces through the writing process.  Building the habit of rereading for clarity and to edit is an important strategy that will be modeled for students all year long. Writers will collaborate with partners to act out and orally rehearse important moments and compliment and question each other to help make their work even better. Reading and writing instruction continue to integrate while students notice how writers develop characters with description and elaboration.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Product Creation

Unit 1

During this first literacy unit, teachers establish classroom routines and expectations built around explicit and systematic reading instruction. While setting goals and promoting reflection are part of this process, the main focus is on a direct, skill-based approach to literacy. Students are introduced to the classroom library with a primary goal of learning how to choose and apply their skills to decodable texts, which contain the specific phonics patterns being taught in the unit. This unit serves as a vital bridge, building upon the foundational skills students learned in grade 1.

Whole-group instructional time is designed to be highly focused on foundational skills. Using the Fundations program, phonics instruction is both direct and systematic, providing practice with digraphs and blends, closed syllables, closed syllable exceptions, r-controlled vowels, bonus letters, and glued sounds. At the same time, Bookworms is used to build students' background knowledge and explicitly teach new academic vocabulary using semantic mapping, semantic feature analysis, and fostering word consciousness. The teacher models fluent reading with a strong focus on the three elements of fluency—prosody, accuracy, and rate—to provide a clear example of what proficient reading sounds like.

Small-group instruction serves as a crucial time for differentiated and targeted practice of the five pillars of literacy. The primary resources used are Geodes decodables, which allow students to apply the learned phonics skills to connected text. Similarly, Rasinski’s Megabook of Fluency and Fundations’ storytime passages are some of the resources used to build fluency. The small-group structure also provides ample time for students to review and master Trick words and new vocabulary from read-alouds, ensuring all skills are practiced and become automatic.

The writing component of this unit is directly connected to the reading instruction. Through writing poetry, students practice encoding with learned phonics patterns and build a deeper understanding of the relationship between sounds and letters. This work encourages students to experiment with self-generated ideas and creative expression while reinforcing the foundational skills of a strong writer.

Students will hear, read, write, and speak about read-alouds as part of direct instruction from the following books: Arthur’s Back to School Day by Lillian Hoban, Goldisocks and the Three Libearians by Jackie Mimms Hopkins, I Can Do Hard Things by Gaby Garcia, Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt, Hailstones and Halibut Bones by Mary O’Neill ,Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer, A Poke in the I by Paul Janeszko and Chris Raschka, Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood, and The Magical Yet by Angela DiTerlizzi.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Collective Intelligence, Self-Awareness

Unit 2

This integrated unit leverages high-quality, engaging literature to build background knowledge and vocabulary while providing explicit, systematic instruction in both reading and writing skills. Motivation is driven by the use of compelling texts that allow students to explore character relationships and universal themes. Reading instruction includes (standards and skills here)

Whole-group instructional time is designed to be highly focused on foundational skills to ensure students can decode increasingly complex text and vocabulary, promoting automaticity. Using the Fundations program, phonics instruction is both direct and systematic, providing practice with suffixes, comparative suffixes, diphthongs, multisyllabic and compound words, and the -ic spelling rule.Teachers explicitly model how to analyze characters' motivations and emotions, which builds content knowledge about human behavior. Tier 2 academic vocabulary related to character traits and story elements is taught directly through semantic mapping and semantic feature analysis and fostering word consciousness. Repeated, close readings of texts are used to analyze story structure and determine how characters and their lessons reflect students' own experiences and the experiences of others.

Small-group instruction serves as a crucial time for differentiated and targeted practice of the five pillars of literacy. The primary resources used are Geodes decodables, which allow students to apply the learned phonics skills to connected text. Similarly, Rasinski’s Megabook of Fluency and Fundations’ storytime passages are some of the resources used to build fluency. The small-group structure also provides ample time for students to review and master Trick words and new vocabulary from read-alouds, ensuring all skills are practiced and become automatic. Both fiction and non-fiction texts provide targeted practice in decoding, fluency, and comprehension strategies based on student need. Student discussions about text are documented through structured note-taking (including drawing and labeling) which serves as rehearsal for composing a formal written text analysis.

Writing Instruction is focused on narrative writing and encoding application providing explicit, systematic teaching of narrative craft, directly tied to the foundational skills of encoding and composition. Students practice encoding by applying taught phonics patterns and grade-level high-frequency words to their writing. Writing time is used to reinforce the accurate and automatic recall of spelling conventions. Student writing drafts are analyzed to identify specific group and individual needs in narrative technique. Teachers then provide explicit, whole-class and targeted small-group instruction that models specific compositional moves. Students explicitly analyze how mentor authors use dialogue, precise description, action verbs, and internal thoughts to "stretch out" a moment. Students then immediately apply these identified craft elements to their own personal narratives, building on their prior knowledge of "small moments." Teachers deliver targeted, corrective feedback during writing time, ensuring students accurately apply the taught skills and correct foundational skill errors.

Students will hear, read, write, and speak about read-alouds as part of direct instruction from the following books: Pinky and Rex by James Howe, Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel, Winners Never Quit by Mia Hamm, Jamaica’s Blue Marker by Juanita Havill, and Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Product Creation, Alternate Perspectives

Unit 1

This foundational literacy unit establishes a clear structure for explicit, systematic, and cumulative instruction in third grade. Its central purpose is to solidify students' foundational reading skills while simultaneously building the knowledge and vocabulary necessary for advanced comprehension. The unit's core principle is the direct connection between sound, print, and meaning, which prepares students to read and write more complex words and texts.

During whole-group instruction, the focus is on two key areas. First, foundational skills are taught directly and explicitly using Fundations. This includes phonics and morphology, where students learn and apply spelling rules for suffixes (e.g., -s, -ed, -ing), plurals and irregular plurals, the doubling rule, and vowel-consonant-e (VCe) syllables. At the same time, daily, brief, and targeted practice reinforces students’ phonological awareness, or their ability to manipulate the sounds within words, a crucial skill for both reading and spelling.

Second, whole-group instruction is dedicated to reading comprehension and knowledge building. The Bookworms curriculum provides shared reading to build background knowledge, comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency.Complex fiction and non-fiction texts are used as read-alouds to build students’ background knowledge and academic vocabulary. The teacher explicitly teaches and defines key Tier 2 vocabulary words that are critical for understanding the text using explicit word instruction, semantic mapping, and semantic feature analysis. The read-alouds also provide an opportunity for the teacher to model how proficient readers integrate their knowledge of phonics, vocabulary, and sentence structure to construct meaning. After the reading, rich, text-dependent discussions help students synthesize information and engage with the material on a deeper level.

In small-group settings, students receive differentiated and targeted practice of the skills taught in the whole group. For example, students apply their developing phonics skills by reading decodable texts using Geodes, which are specifically structured to reinforce recent spelling patterns. This allows them to build fluency with connected text. Materials from sources like Rasinski are used to provide structured opportunities for repeated reading, which builds reading speed, accuracy, and prosody. The small group structure is also the primary time for students to review and master previously taught concepts, including trick words and new vocabulary, ensuring skills are retained and become automatic.

Writing instruction is closely integrated with reading, with students applying their knowledge of phonics, spelling rules, and grammar to their own written compositions. The unit emphasizes encoding with learned phonics patterns and using correct grammar and mechanics. Students also practice writing about reading, which requires them to synthesize information and use evidence from texts, directly reinforcing their comprehension skills.

Students will hear, read, write, and speak about read-alouds as part of direct instruction from the following books: Fudge-a-Mania by Judy Blume, What is Climate? by Ellen Lawrence, The Raft by Jim LaMarche, and Jane Goodall by Laura Hamilton.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Collective Intelligence, Self-Awareness

Unit 2

In this Grade 3 unit, students are immersed in traditional and adapted tales to deepen both engagement and comprehension.  Using principles from the Science of Reading, Fundations teaches students to accurately and fluently decode words and to deeply comprehend a wide range of texts to address the grade-level standards: Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers. Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text; Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events. Distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator or those of the characters.

In addition, students receive explicit instruction in narrative structure, including clear beginnings, rising action, climax, and resolution. With guidance, they examine how authors develop narrators and characters to convey deeper meanings and morals.

Through Bookworms, students have opportunities for oral discussion, repeated reading, and written response are woven throughout, supporting vocabulary development, background knowledge, and syntax awareness. To build vocabulary, students will use explicit word instruction by engaging in activities such as analyzing word meanings, practicing words in context, and applying them in speaking and writing tasks through planned and specific read-alouds. Students then transfer their knowledge by drafting and revising their own adapted tales.

In small-group settings, students receive differentiated and targeted practice of the skills taught in the whole group. For example, students apply their developing phonics skills by reading decodable texts using Geodes, which are specifically structured to reinforce recent spelling patterns. This allows them to build fluency with connected text. Materials from sources like Rasinski are used to provide structured opportunities for repeated reading, which builds reading speed, accuracy, and prosody. The small group structure is also the primary time for students to review and master previously taught concepts, including trick words and new vocabulary, ensuring skills are retained and become automatic.

Students follow the stages of the writing process—planning, drafting, elaborating, and revising—to create stories with a clear moral or lesson. They use graphic organizers and story maps to analyze texts and guide their own writing. Conventions and grammar are integrated into each stage, allowing students to practice accuracy and develop automaticity within meaningful reading and writing contexts.

By the end of the unit, students will not only have a strong appreciation of traditional and adapted tales, but they will also demonstrate control of narrative structure to create their own adapted tales.

Students will hear, read, write, and speak about read-alouds as part of direct instruction from the following books: Lon Po Po by Ed Young, Red Riding Hood by James Marshall, Cinderella by Barbara Karlin, Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch, and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Product Creation, Alternate Perspectives

Unit 1 ReadinG

The goal of this unit is to establish a reading community in the classroom so students get excited about books. Teachers will model thinking, talking, selecting books and goal setting to students using an authentic collection of mentor texts and chapter books.  The students will be engaged in conversations about reading and writing, in order to make connections in their reading lives. 

Students will gather evidence to support their ideas about craft, topics, genres and goals that are important to them. A large volume of reading and stamina are most important as teachers watch and notice their students' reading habits. As students develop independence and stamina, teachers begin assessing students using existing reading data from grade 3 and their observations of student reading behaviors, surveys and talk about reading.

Students will hear many Patricia Polacco, Jacqueline Woodson and Maribeth Boelts stories that will lay a foundation for the upcoming unit on characters. Teachers will explicitly teach the skills of telling and then writing summaries in the reading notebook and provide students with a progression that helps them set goals for their own writing about reading.  An important part of writing about reading will be gathering evidence with double journal entries to support their thinking.  These entries will be taught through initial modeling with the teacher and students moving to independence of their own double journal entries.

This unit will provide a rich opportunity for the social emotional goals for students and classroom community through mentor texts and engaging discussions.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Self-Awareness
 

Unit 2 Writing

Students will be building off prior knowledge of small moments to develop a personal narrative based on an experience in their life. The unit begins with generating ideas about what a personal narrative is and generating their own personal moments to then narrow into a topic. This helps lay the foundation for the writing process while focusing on a beginning, middle and end. Students will go through the process of planning, drafting, revising, editing, publishing and reflecting. During the process, students will focus on elaboration strategies, using details and transition words to create a smooth and logical flow to the writing. Modeling the writing process gives students the window into our thinking as a writer and allows students to see the messiness within the writing process.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Design
 

Unit 3 Reading

This unit pushes readers to build on inference work in order to interpret themes. Students will learn that themes emerge from the way characters react and get in and out of trouble across a text. Reading partners and book clubs should focus their work on growing and changing theories about characters as they consider multiple perspectives and interpretations of an author's message.  Discussions can reveal another way of interpreting a character's actions and motivations. 
This work should leave readers open to a variety of interpretations and lead to the transfer of critical thinking across texts. To prepare for the work of the PBA, students will begin charting and tracking how characters in a variety of stories handle the same issues of trouble to reveal the theme of the story.
Small group work will focus on making inferences. Teachers will want to build progressions that show students how to “level up their thinking” to make deeper and more important inferences. This will move interpretation work from a lesson learned in this book to a more universal interpretation of a theme from a life lesson.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing

Unit 4

The personal essay unit gives students the opportunity to consider who is important in their life. The unit begins by introducing the students to a variety of personal essay examples. This unit takes the students through the essay writing process; picking a topic, paragraph structure, and drafting a five paragraph essay. During the unit students will learn how to use a graphic organizer to develop well written paragraphs, which helps lay the foundation of structure and organization to transfer into a well written essay. In addition, students will learn the process of revising and editing a written piece. Modeling the writing process gives students a window into our thinking as a writer and allows students to see the messiness within the writing process.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Design
 

Unit 5 Reading 

Readers will engage in a variety of nonfiction texts to explore different structures, craft moves and styles that authors use to teach readers. Students will identify text features and text structures and learn how they help the reader determine important information.  Readers will practice note-taking in the structure of the text that they’re reading. The focus will be on the main idea and detail structure. Students will also compare and contrast work thinking about the audience, purpose and message of the text.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing
 

Unit 5 Writing

Building off the reading unit, students will study two amazing nonfiction authors: Seymour Simon and Steve Jenkins. Students will explore the structures, craft moves and styles that these authors use to teach readers about interesting topics. Researching an animal of their choice, students will collect notes and create a mini informational book that includes pages in the style of Simon and Jenkins.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Product Creation
 

Unit 6 Reading

Students will become deeply immersed in the fantasy genre and further develop higher level thinking skills to study how authors develop characters and themes within a story.  Students will begin by exploring elements of fantasy and the characters' journey that reveal messages about heroism and good vs. evil.  Students will pay attention to the lessons the character learns or how they change to determine the theme of the story.  Partnerships are utilized to engage students in accountable talk to deepen conversations about their fantasy texts.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing
 

Unit 7

An exciting aspect of this historical fiction unit is the culmination of all units taught, as well as merging the American Revolution content, concurrently taught in Social Studies.  The students will take a critical and empathic stance to historical perspectives and experiences as they are immersed in rich literature. The content learned in Social Studies will serve as a springboard for meaningful book club conversations and partnerships. This unit offers the opportunity for students to weave in their content and skill knowledge by writing journal entries from the perspective of a character living during the American Revolution.  Students will analyze the obstacles and challenges the character faced during the unfamiliar time period relying on the strong foundation of character analysis, personal essay writing, non-fiction skills and lessons learned in fantasy.  Students will pay attention to alternate perspectives, message and theme, and inferencing to deepen their understanding of important historical events.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Alternate Perspectives
 

Unit 1 Reading

Students are familiar with the routines and procedures of choosing a variety of just right books, accountable talk, working with reading partners and book clubs and have worked to evaluate and justify with text evidence when writing about reading. While setting up the classroom initially focus on setting up the routines and procedures that will help the community of readers able to talk about and read books critically. Teachers will act as a coach and conductor by helping students build a reading life where new routines for carrying and keeping track of books that travel from home to school and back again will be taught. The primary goal is to set the stage for engaging a community of avid readers who read, think, talk and write about books in great volume. During this unit, review turn and talk, in order to give students practice and opportunity to take and make reading journeys through a book more meaningful. Since students are so familiar with the workshop model, this unit focuses more on establishing classroom routines and expectations, getting students into just right books and practicing writing about your reading. It should not exceed more than two weeks because the goal is for students to be in a book as they enter the writing launch/narrative unit.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Self-Awareness
 

Unit 1 Writing

Personal narrative can be defined as a small moment story that is reflective of a significant or meaningful, event, time, place, person, or memory in your life. Students will explore narrative writing by reflecting on significant and meaningful moments in their lives. In doing this, students will practice collecting ideas for writing and growing those ideas into stories by implementing specific writing strategies. Over the course of four weeks, students will move fluidly through the writing process; they will spend roughly one week in the “launch” phase, establishing themselves as writers and class writing expectations; one week brainstorming and generating ideas; one week planning and drafting; and one week editing, revising and publishing.

It is an expectation that teachers are writing and modeling writing strategies alongside students throughout the unit. A major focus of this unit should be on writing volume and engagement. This means a majority of the time should be spent actually writing, not on brainstorming or ‘perfecting’ writing.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Design

Unit 2

This unit lays the foundation for interpreting work that students will continue in the social issues book club unit later in the year. Building off of character work in the past, students will learn to identify and analyze the less obvious traits and feelings in characters that reveal the complexity and layers of a character. This work will then lead to more complex thinking as students shift their focus to using those identified complexities to analyze character change.  While analyzing character change, students will learn to empathize with their characters to help them fully understand the changes the character is experiencing.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing
 

Unit 3

Nonfiction books will first be sorted into general topics including animals, disasters, technology and history. Students will spend time previewing these broad topics to determine an area of interest. From there, students will select the topic they are most interested in.  Students will build off of their work from fourth grade by narrowing their focus from a broad topic by developing their own text sets (i.e. animals will be narrowed to endangered animals, narrowed to poaching elephants). Teachers will tailor the mini-lesson to include the teaching points from stage 3 but also to be more topic specific based on choices their students have made in their classroom. Teachers will model the research process using materials from the topics students can relate to, but likely not something students in their classroom has chosen.

Students will use their collected notes to develop and clearly articulate a feature article that has a bias/perspective about their topic. Students will write with the purpose of presenting information with a bias, organizing their writing with text structures and text features. The immersion into the genre through the research bend of this unit will imitate the writing styles of the books they read. Students will end their articles with a call to action, steps the reader(s) can take to help. As a culmination, students will their "expertise" knowledge with their peers during a museum walk share out.  They will read a variety of other students' articles and provide them with feedback.  Their ability to talk about and write about their chosen topic in detail and with accuracy is the goal.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Design

Unit 4 Reading

While exploring social issues, students will infer character traits and motivation while justifying their inferences with both text evidence and schema to interpret themes that authors reveal through the troubles characters face. In this unit, students work in book clubs or partnerships to collect and share their ideas. Students may interpret texts differently, highlighting one social issue or another. 
Social Issues May Include: 

• Bullying
• Fitting In/Being New
• Friendship Issues
• Growing Up
• Homelessness
• Divorce/Family Issues
• Racism/Discrimination
• Peer Pressure
• Death/Dying
• Building Community

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing

Unit 4 Writing

Students will do the heavy lifting work of rehearsing and revising interpretations of literature in their social issues book clubs. Using the theories that students developed in book clubs using a variety of text they will write literary essays. The focus might be on theme, character analysis, importance of setting, author's craft, changes of character from beginning to end of story, or anything else related to analyzing a story. Some students will use one text while others will compare and contrast using multiple texts. The end product will include a thesis/claim, supporting evidence (actual words) from their book(s), organization using paragraphs, and conclusions which may include, an inspirational quote or thought, circling back to the beginning, making connections to the "real world" or the author's own life.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Design
 

Unit 5
Picturing Change

Students are challenged to interpret and analyze multiple points of view through the use of picture books. This unit serves as a culmination of the work around character, theme, and conflict from throughout the year. However, it elevates the work from previous units by challenging students to use these three elements of literary studies to analyze multiple perspectives and points of view across an inclusive collection of picture books.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Collective Intelligence, Alternate Perspectives
 

Unit 6

Students will be immersed in reading and writing poetry in this unit. The purpose of pairing these two units together is so that students have the opportunity to read with volume and engagement while practicing analysis through creative thinking practices. The class period should be split with time dedicated to reading and writing poetry each day. 

Students will explore a variety of types of poems through their own reading and writing. They will use their reading as inspiration for their own writing, emulating author's craft moves and topics from their favorite writers. Throughout this unit, students will compile all of their writing into a poetry journal/portfolio that will include samples of the different types of writing students explore. The writing process should be very fluid; students should be revising their writing as they read more poetry to test out figurative language and new writing strategies they encounter in their reading.  Mini lessons are designed to introduce a type of poetry and revisit a type of figurative language for the mid-workshop teaching point.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Design
 

Unit 7 Reading

In this unit, the work will continue to build off of the fourth grade historical fiction unit. Students previously took a critical and empathetic stance to historical perspectives and experiences. Students will be immersed in reading historical fiction and nonfiction centered around Slavery, the Civil War, Industrialization, Immigration, Westward Expansion, World War I, World War II, Civil Rights, the Great Depression and current events. Students will analyze and grow theories about, and trace themes across how struggles grow/stem from power, money and opportunity.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Alternate Perspectives
 

Unit 1    

This unit lays the foundation for readers and writers workshop routines, procedures and expectations while launching students to be reflective goal setters who collaborate respectfully both in and out of the classroom. Students will share thoughts and ideas and engage in evidence based discourse.  Teachers continue to follow the workshop model using an interactive read-aloud as well as independent reading. Teachers will gather anecdotal notes and observations throughout the unit as students are working, providing feedback and coaching to students as routines, procedures, and collaboration are established and grow in the classroom community. 

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Self-Awareness
 

Unit 2    

In this unit, students grow ideas through the writing process as they explore and accumulate stories about their own lives. A personal essay is a creative form of non-fiction about an experience, place or person that is meaningful or important to the writer. While the writer still develops a thesis, the analysis takes the form of elaboration and reflection of the writer’s life.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Design
 

Unit 3 Reading

In this unit, students work in partnerships/book clubs and come prepared with questions and evidence to discuss. The complexity of the texts will present new applications for students to do the work of interpretation and compare and contrast characters and themes across multiple texts. Readers' Notebooks will serve as important tools for gathering thoughts and evidence.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Collective Intelligence
 

Unit 3 Writing    

Students will lift the level of essay writing and remember that writers always consider their audience, purpose and message when writing and include craft moves and voice that make writing interesting to read. Readers' Notebooks from the reading unit will serve as springboards and help students use and further develop their ideas and evidence as they draft and revise essays.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Design
 

Unit 4    

This unit will start by building engagement with nonfiction texts through inquiry-based instruction. The spirit of this unit is for students to start finding engagement, learning, and wondering in informational reading which will eventually lead to research. Students will have opportunities to read many informational texts gathered in the classroom and library. Throughout this unit, there is an emphasis on critical reading, explaining reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text, and drawing evidence from informational text to support analysis, reflection and research. Students will learn how to present information in an organized manner, relying heavily on their inquiries and notetaking skills from reading a variety of nonfiction resources. The overall goal of this unit is to teach students to be more persuasive and more analytic, able to weigh evidence, to follow lines of logic, and draw evidence-based conclusions. After collecting and synthesizing the information gleaned from the reading, students will choose a medium to persuade an audience.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Product Creation
 

Unit 5 
    

Stories are everywhere around us - on the TV, in songs or even from your friends. Some stories have lasted hundreds to even thousands of years by being passed down through the oral tradition of storytelling.  Later stories were written down, but we still love to hear them told. Stories teach us about an array of cultures, morals, themes and connect us all. Students will be immersed in the short story genre to read like writers for the purpose of analysis and goal setting. Students will analyze and deconstruct plots, characters, settings and craft moves to help them model and plan for presenting their own original short story.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Design
 

Unit 6 
 

In this unit, students will work in partnerships or book clubs to become more powerful readers of fantasy as they explore new worlds and settings. Using the Hero’s Journey, will help guide students through interpreting the elements that set the fantasy genre apart from other genres, paying close attention as they read. Students will look at archetypes, how author's word choice shapes meaning and tone and the use of symbolism.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Collective Intelligence

Unit 1

Fostering motivation and engagement in reading and writing are critical in the beginning weeks of the Language Arts classroom. This launch unit establishes both as students merge the two with the help of mentor authors. In reading, students will be exposed to different styles of writing, such as novels in verse, screenplays, and graphic novels. Students will analyze the unique elements of each genre and how they help the reader navigate the text and develop inferences. Then in writing, students will have opportunity and freedom to practice writing in those styles, emulating the authors and texts they explored in their reading. Students will draft and plan writing pieces in each genre, then, will self-select the piece and genre they want to finish and polish for peer feedback. Throughout this process, teachers are modeling with their own writers' notebook will lay the foundation for risk-taking. As always, the teacher will emphasize the significance of examining ideas that are important and interesting, and which we can return to later on. 

One of the primary purposes of this launch is to open the world of greater choice in writing - writing that is spontaneous, diverse, and creative. Readers and writers will work with partners to set goals and reflect together, and as always, they will read and write outside the classroom on a regular basis to continue building agency, engagement, and stamina in both reading and writing. All this work and exploration will culminate in a 7th grade writing celebration where students will spend time reading their peers’ work and providing positive feedback.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Product Creation
 

Unit 2

Historical fiction is a highly engaging and interesting genre. This unit challenges students to navigate the genre through the careful study of author's craft by focusing on the popular author, Alan Gratz. Students will work in book clubs to analyze the craft moves he employs across his novels and the purpose or impact of those craft moves. After studying his craft moves and their purpose across the mentor text, Prisoner B-3087, and their book club books, students will select a historical fiction novel of their choice to transfer their understandings into a completely new context.

This unit will take approximately 5 weeks. The first 4 weeks students will be working in book clubs and will be listening to the teacher read aloud the mentor text. The final week of the unit, students will transition into independent historical fiction books. This means over the course of the unit, students will read a minimum of three historical fiction books.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing

Unit 3

The literary essay serves as a medium for students to formally analyze a text. In this unit, students will work to develop their thinking and analysis of a text to create a literary essay. The literary essay will use direct evidence from the text to support their thoughts, and ultimately analyze the use of the author's craft and purpose. Students will be using their work from the author study unit to write this essay. Throughout this unit, students will focus on deepening their analytical thinking through their writing and their ability to craft complete, complex thoughts.

Students will focus their essays on either proving the impact of a specific authors craft move or how the author uses various craft moves for a specific purpose.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Product Creation

Unit 4

Research begins with interest and curiosity. This brief three week unit will challenge students to navigate nonfiction research through a high interest topic of their choice. Students will begin their research by choosing a broad topic and narrowing their focus within that topic. They will work to collect information from reliable and credible sources and use that information to develop their own stance on their focus. This unit is directly connected to the upcoming writing unit; students will use the research they complete to write an argumentative vlog about their topic.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Inquiry

Unit 5

A vlog is a blog in video form that includes a claim with reasons and evidence by incorporating media features such as images, video clips, sounds, and music. After spending about three weeks researching, students will develop their own argumentative claim about their research topic and draft reasons, evidence and an analysis of each reason. They will also consider the counter argument and speak to why their stance is stronger. They will revise their writing to include rhetorical devices, consider audience, tone, and purpose and add in entertainment factors to their vlogs. As a culminating experience, students will share their vlogs and nominate their peers for various recognition in the “Vloggies.”

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Product Creation

Unit 6

Close reading is thoughtful, critical analysis of a text that focuses on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise understanding of the text’s structure, craft, meanings, characters, themes, etc.. This unit challenges students to refine this skill while working with short stories by annotating the text as they read. Ultimately, they will use the annotations from their close readings to determine a complex theme supported with text evidence. This will be expressed in the form of an essay that reflects the structure of the previous literary essay unit.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing
 

Unit 7 
   

The structure of poetry challenges students to interpret text and language without the grammatical restrictions of prose. This unit challenges students to analyze how variety in structure and composition impacts interpretation and meaning making for the reader. Students will read across a variety of poetry while analyzing the different structures and uses of language. As they read, they will also have scheduled drafting days in their "poetry notebooks" where they work to show true understanding of structure and form by emulating the various authors, styles, and structures they've been reading and analyzing in their own poems.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing
 

Unit 8   

This unit serves as a culmination of all of the work from throughout the year. Students will be challenged to analyze various perspectives across multiple texts and how those perspectives reveal information about the characters or themes. This unit follows researcher, Kate Roberts', whole class novel approach. Students will begin the unit by spending three weeks reading the text, Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson. Following the whole class novel, students will spend two weeks navigating book clubs and transferring the reading skills from Harbor Me into their own independent practice. Students are challenged to grow their sense of empathy through respectful discourse with their book clubs.  Since this is the final unit of the year, book club options have been selected to be high interest topics and books to increase and promote reading volume and engagement moving into the summer.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Alternate Perspectives
 

Unit 2  

After the launch unit where students set reading plans and focused on independent reading volume and engagement, students will now move to learning and recognizing the archetypal pattern of the hero's journey in literature and film. Through this understanding of the journey, students will be able to analyze text on a deeper level using knowledge of the hero's journey stages in addition to evaluating the author's choices in a variety of media. Finally, students will make a comparison between two journeys across texts and reflect on themselves and the world around them in the form of a comparative essay. They will work alongside the teacher to navigate the hero's journey. Students will then transition into their own independent books. This unit ends with the comparative essay which will serve as the baseline for the literary essay unit.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing

Unit 3    

This unit serves to take grade eight students' knowledge of effective storytelling and elevate it to the next level. This is a critical skill, as we know that narrative writing is the genre that really gives students their own voice and makes writing meaningful and personal. Students will have ample opportunities to learn, experiment with, publish, and share the elements of creative writing. Rather than commit to writing about one character, one plot line, one setting (really one story), student choice will be expanded and the volume of student writing will increase as they work daily to try new techniques as writers.

By the end of the unit, students will understand that they can call upon these narrative writing skills and strategies for any type of writing. This will be done through mini-lessons that allow them to create settings, establish mood, develop characters, delve into description via imagery (figurative language, sensory details), and experiment with voice. Although students may create any piece, specific instruction will be given in the following formats: short story, vignette, poetry, and chapter one.

Throughout the unit, students will work to build a portfolio of their writing samples and ultimately choose one piece to publish in The Polson Press, a blog designed with access for Polson students only. A reflection explaining the good writing techniques they used and the effect on the reader will wrap up the unit.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Self Awareness, Product Creation

Unit 4   

In this narrative nonfiction unit, students will explore how real people have emerged as heroes amidst cultural struggles for power, considering their stories from a global perspective.  In examining the structure and techniques of narrative nonfiction, students will consider how authors evoke a reaction in readers and shine a light on global issues. Students will be able to determine a key passage in a narrative nonfiction text and analyze how the author presents a global issue through personal experience. Additionally, using the text's perspective, their own evolving position on the issue, and the opinions of their peers, students will engage in discourse about global issues and their implications for our lives and our communities. Finally, students will write about a global issue that they would like to "shine a light on" for our community as a result of their work in this unit. The purpose of this weekly column is to raise awareness, or “shine a light” on a global issue with which residents of Connecticut may not be familiar.

Students will work in theme based book clubs. This means they will be working in small groups centered around a common theme but reading different books. Their discussions will be focused on analyzing the alternate perspectives by drawing from the different experiences in the books.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Inquiry

Unit 5   

The literary genre of Dystopian, while not new, has made a significant resurgence in young adult literature. In this warped version of a utopia, the structure of a government-designed society is the antagonist in the story. As students enter into these dark worlds where the protagonists must struggle for physical and/or moral survival, they will explore the way authors alter our world to create the strange new world of dystopian texts. Through their interpretation of how the setting affects the characters, students will examine the social commentary the author is making while they also uncover universal themes.

Throughout this unit, students will be using information from the text to support their analysis of how the specific dystopian setting affects the story and how the author's message is delivered to readers to make some kind of social commentary. Finally, students will make connections among our world, the world the author has created, and history to demonstrate an understanding of the social issues the author is highlighting in the text.

This is a high volume reading unit and draws on Kate Robert’s A Novel Approach. It is taught following the recommended pacing of two weeks in a whole class novel, two weeks in book clubs and one week in independent books. Students will read at minimum, a total of three dystopian books across the unit (Fahrenheit 451 + Book club book of their choice + Independent book of their choice).

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Inquiry, Analyzing

Unit 6

After reading a minimum of two dystopian texts, students will choose one element of dystopian literature to compare across the texts in a literary essay. Students must synthesize pieces of their analysis of both texts with their understanding of the characteristics of dystopian literature to create an original thesis. This essay will build off of grade 7’s work with author’s craft. They will use the same literary analysis essay structure that they’ve learned with a focus on bumping up the sophistication of their analysis and fluency. 

Through the process of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing, students will then prove that thesis with critical evidence across texts in a well-written literary analysis.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Product Creation

Unit 7  

Students have completed the dystopian reading unit where they considered the concept of power struggles that arise in government-controlled societies, many of which stemmed from and/or led to social issues. It's time to take the idea of social issues to their world and the world around them via an open-choice reading unit. Students will read fiction or narrative nonfiction to find the social issues within the text. Students will identify the social issues and through their analysis of character conflict and the motivation for the choices they make, they will discuss the author's message about the issue, and provide their own commentary about the issue. Outside research and current news stories will also inform that commentary. Students will make connections between the text and their own world and/or the world around them.  This unit is used as an opportunity to visit with the LMC and hear about new and exciting book titles as students move into the end of the year.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Alternate Perspectives

Unit 1

Students will choose independent reading books from classroom or school libraries. Students are required to finish one book and are encouraged to read more than one, aiming toward a goal of 200 pages per week. While reading their independent novels, students will learn to:  

• Set attainable reading goals 
• Develop reading habits in and out of the classroom 
• Track thinking in an organized way 
• Productively and constructively confer with teacher 
• Love to read! 

Mini-lessons will feature short anchor texts that present a lens with which to do focus their independent reading and a framework for the next trimester: morality, reading literature, plot structure, characterization, and close reading for literary devices. Teachers will use anchor activities to help students broaden schemas and deepen understandings as they continue their independent work. Thinking should occur in the form of writing every day.  
Teachers will confer with students daily, with an aim to meet with each student 1-3 times over the course of the unit. 

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Collective Intelligence

Unit 2

Students will begin this unit with the core text, Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson. Over the course of this unit, students will learn to read critically. When a student considers a character's perspective, they must be constantly noticing and wondering. They must always self-check: What do I know? What do I think about what I know? Do I trust this character's point of view? When thinking about how different characters interpret events and why, the students must be actively reading. From here, the students will learn to consider how context and setting influence the perspective of the characters and should self-reflect on how their own environments affect their interpretations of events happening around them.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Alternate Perspectives

Unit 3

Students will be immersed in book clubs, all of which fall into three distinct categories. The first category, “Thematically Relevant,” includes titles with similar structures, characters, and themes that students could identify and explore in the core novel, Just Mercy. The second category provides options for students who want to hone their craft when analyzing themes. The final category includes a list of options for students who might want something that speaks more to their daily lives: “Life of a Teen.” These titles include characters who are similar in age to our freshmen students and might be dealing with similar situations. As such, these titles help our students feel understood and seen.  Titles can be seen broken down in this chart (seen below). This list is not limited to the options below, as teachers are always searching for new and exciting reads to add to our extensive collection. Students will independently apply the skills taught in the core text to their book club book while having rich discussions. The teacher will facilitate these discussions and meet with small groups/clubs that need support with previously taught skills and strategies. Throughout the book club experience, groups will gather evidence to support their thinking about theme as they will ultimately craft a formal theme essay to present their analysis. 

As a final note, all titles are vetted through research (which includes consideration from other districts), professional resources (such as the LMC and professional academic reviews), student choice and feedback, and experience (before providing a text as an option, members of the department read the entirety of the text). 

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Collective Intelligence
 

Unit 4

The second reading launch for trimester 2 will focus on independent reading, independent research, and synthesis of various pieces of information. Part of preparing students for Romeo and Juliet will be to teach students how to research and synthesize information in order to understand a complex text. As students read R&J, they will be asked to analyze characters through the focus on teenagers and their growing brains. As students research a topic related to their own independent reading books, they will be preparing a presentation in order to teach a small group. Throughout their research, students will be considering biases, finding reliable resources, and synthesizing information in order to draw conclusions. 

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Idea Generation, Product Creation
 

Unit 5

Students explore how patterns and contrasts in language (diction, imagery, and figurative language) reveal central ideas in texts and develop various motifs (light vs. dark, dreams vs. reality, high vs. low, etc.) in Romeo and Juliet. Laying the foundation for allegories which can be found in Shakespeare's writing, students examine the extent to which characters' reactions to conflict and opposition dictate the outcomes of a situation and learn about the science and psychology behind the way teenagers think about choice, conflict, and consequence. Students apply this knowledge of psychology to evaluate characters in Romeo and Juliet, in their books clubs, and their own lives.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Decision Making
 

Unit 6

Poetry is a rich genre and can help us connect and find meaning in our own experiences. During the book club unit, students read a wide range of poetry and prose. Shifting the lens from reader to writer, students will use what they learned about craft to write their own poetry that explores questions they have about themselves and the world. 

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Product Creation
 

Unit 1

In the launch unit, students will start their thinking about American identity in the past, present, and future. As always, the launch will address workshop expectations and processes. Next, students are immersed into what it means to be American, which is done in the form of articles, short stories and essays from Tale of Two Americas, early American works, current topics, and their independent reading books. Students will also look into their own American identity as well as an immigrant's identity. As students proceed through the unit, they will learn how to analyze for ESP (economic, social, political climates), which is a skill they will continue to use as they continue reading American Literature. The unit culminates with students creating a mission statement of what it means to be American. This mission statement will be refined and reflected upon as they move throughout the course. The goal is to identify and reflect on how thinking has changed.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Product Creation
 

Unit 2

The ultimate goal of this unit is to teach students persuasive writing and public speaking skills. In conjunction with these skills, students will be asked to analyze a modern day witch hunt while also considering the various opinions and perspectives of the polarizing issues. Ideally, students would see the moderate point of view of their chosen issue, considering both sides, their biases, and, ultimately, the truth. Students will work to research an issue before taking an informed stance and will use their research to inform others who might not have the same opinion. 

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Citizenship
 

Unit 3

Through the use of early Native American stories, The Tale of Two Americas, The Crucible, Puritan writings, and various book club titles, students will learn about the beginnings of American life as we know it. We will consider what it means to be a part of a society, specifically American society. Students will learn the background of the Salem Witch Trials, as well as Puritan life (this will be the ESP aspect of the unit). We will continue our work with rhetoric (ethos, pathos, and logos). As students read The Crucible, they will consider what is said and what it implied (subtext, denotation, and connotation), character identity, and individual versus group mentality. Ultimately, students will connect the idea of witch hunts to our American past (Red Scare of the 1950's) as well as other "witch hunts" throughout history. All of these skills and learnings will focus on strengthening the ability to analyze.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Inquiry, Analyzing
 

Unit 4

Students will be engaging with a variety of texts in order to analyze for race, class, and gender. By looking at literature, and their own lives, through the lens of race, class, and gender, students will be able to identify agency (or lack thereof). Students will read The Great Gatsby before gathering into book clubs where they will continue to analyze the effects of race, class, and gender on fictional characters. Ultimately, students will address how race, gender, and class plays a part in American life and ideals. 

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing

Unit 5

In this unit, students will be asked to synthesize multiple texts and points of view in order to come to new conclusions on literature, what it means to be American, and what it means to achieve the American Dream. The goal of this unit is to write with precision, formality, and concision. Students will practice writing with voice as they synthesize multiple texts. 

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing
 

Unit 6

Students will choose independent texts that move away from the canonical WMA (white male author) and move towards marginalized voices. Students will be asked to read texts from alternate perspectives. As we continue working to understand how race, class, and gender affects agency and voice, students will consider how marginalized peoples represent the American Dream. Ultimately, students will consider what makes an American Classic and must decide if their marginalized text fits into these standards.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Alternate Perspectives
 

Unit 7

Students will read through the lens of an author. The goal here is to read, obtain, and practice writing moves from mentor texts and authors. Throughout the unit, students will read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. These short, readable novels are used to teach elements of author's craft and style.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing
 

Unit 8

Students will be studying craft and story-telling as they analyze excerpts from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Using Cisneros' work as a mentor text and model, students will work to bring their own stories to life. As a note, the learning events in this curriculum are multi-day events. Students should be reading and analyzing Mango Street, then applying those strategies to their independent reading, which is then followed by independent practice in their own creative/narrative writing.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Idea Generation
 

Unit 9

Students will work to apply the various reading skills, literary lenses, and American concepts to their final book club reads with the ultimate goal of synthesizing all concepts in their book club discussions. While students read their book club texts, they will work with the same group to create a service learning project aiming to benefit the local community (Madison, shoreline, or CT). As students have been analyzing common issues present in American history and society, the goal of the service learning project is to attempt to assist or aid one aspect of America.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Collective Intelligence, Citizenship
 

Unit 1   

Junior year the focus on analysis continues with literature from around the world. When analyzing literature from other cultures, students will use research and reading strategies to understand ancient texts and their importance in creating foundations for the literature that came afterwards. Students will read, comprehend, and analyze stories from various countries and cultures. These texts might include any of the following titles in the list provided, with a preference to The Odyssey or The Epic of Gilgamesh. 
While reading the ancient stories from other cultures, students will also complete short journal entries about connections to their own lives that will be used later in the course during the personal essay writing assignment (college essay).

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Alternate Perspective

Unit 2 

This unit will dive into Shakespeare's Macbeth. This unit can show the beginning of change in cultures, including but not limited to: new people in a culture, new ideas, challenging older ideas, etc. Doing so prepares students for the second thematic part of this course. Students enrolled in Courage, Hope, and Adversity will be better prepared for the clash of cultures in the trimester two whole-class novel, The Purple Hibiscus. Students enrolled in Reality and Unreality will get a taste for the hidden messages found in literature through magical realism, fantasy, and science fiction, including titles like Metamorphosis and Frankenstein. Students will think deeply about the characters and their motivations in order to write persuasively using rhetorical devices.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Alternate Perspective

   Unit 3   

Students have experienced many ancient works of literature at this point in the course, and have experienced the human condition through the ages. This is a perfect time to reflect on who they are through the writing of a college essay /personal narrative. Students will look back on the journal writings they did in Trimester 1 and focus on audience, purpose, and message as they figure out what aspects of themselves to share with the world. The writing of a first draft happens in this unit, while the revisions occur in the next unit after students have had some time away from their writing pieces.

As students are working on their personal narratives, they will also move to more contemporary literary works. This shift mirrors that of many cultures, at times experiencing very rapid changes, causing cultural and generational shifts. Students will look for the cultural values they noted in earlier texts and analyze the way literature supports continuity and changes to those values. Students will conduct research more independently, creating their own research questions and noting important need-to-know topics for both a class text and an independent or small group text. Student responsibility for learning will increase in this trimester as students will be expected to continue to build up their analysis tools, and apply their prior learning to new situations.

PLEASE NOTE: This is the first unit in the thematic course offering Courage, Hope, and Adversity. Students will continue to work on skills, strategies, and concepts from the first trimester version of World Literature, but will not focus on thematic representations of human courage, the importance of hope, and overcoming adversity.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Inquiry, Analyzing, Design

Unit 4    

At this point in the course, students are ready to be more independent in applying the skills they have learned and will branch off into book clubs to create a “practice” project that will prepare them further for the final exam. This culminating unit serves as an opportunity for students to transfer the skills and strategies from previous units in this course into their own independent book clubs. Students have experienced a variety of ways to make their thinking visible this year through posters, poetry, presentations, and writing. The "practice" project is an opportunity for students to show all of the different ways by creating a display of their learning. The reading for this unit is varied and encompasses many different cultures and issues. 

While students are in book clubs and/or reading independently, they are also conferring about the personal narratives written in the last unit. Putting away our writing for a while can help us notice what we need to do to make it better. 

PLEASE NOTE: This is the last unit in the second half of World Literature. It is the final unit of the thematic course, Courage, Hope, and Adversity.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Inquiry, Design, Collective Intelligence
 

Real & Unreal: Unit 1

Students have experienced many ancient works of literature at this point in the course, and have experienced the human condition through the ages. This is a perfect time to reflect on who they are through the writing of a college essay /personal narrative. Students will look back on the journal writings they did in Trimester 1 and focus on audience, purpose, and message as they figure out what aspects of themselves to share with the world. The writing of a first draft happens in this unit, while the revisions occur in the next unit after students have had some time away from their writing pieces.

Students who found new appreciation for the fantastical throughout the ancient texts like The Odyssey and The Epic of Gilgamesh will now move forward in time to modern versions of the fantastical. While we will no longer discuss the gods and mythology, we will dive deep into a world like our own with elements beyond our comprehension. Students will consider a text for its superficial meaning, as well as its subversive commentary on the author's society. With the fantasy genre, students will encounter fictionalized stories that act as criticisms on society as a whole. This requires research and background knowledge, which will act as an integral part of their analysis and understanding. 

PLEASE NOTE: This is the first unit in the thematic course offering Real and Unreal. Students will continue to work on skills, strategies, and concepts from the first trimester version of World Literature, but will not focus on thematic representations of human courage, the importance of hope, and overcoming adversity.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Inquiry, Analyzing 

Real & Unreal Unit 2

Students will continue to navigate challenging and dense texts that depict a variety of human experiences unlike their own. In the previous unit, students studied the craft of magical realism, as well as the surrealist text The Metamorphosis, to understand how authors use fantastical situations to subversively critique human nature, society, or political events. As students move to their next genre study, they will be analyzing the purpose of science fiction as a genre (hint: these types of authors act similarly to authors of magical realism and surrealism). Once students are introduced to various elements of science fiction, they will engage with a self-selected text in book clubs. Throughout their book club study, they will analyze the various elements of sci-fi, surrealism, and magical realism. As they read and comprehend, they will research the element of society their author is critiquing. Ultimately, students will use their research to show how they've critically analyzed the text and its overall message.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Inquiry, Analyzing, Product Creation

Real & Unreal Unit 3   

In this unit, students will continue the process of blending fiction and nonfiction to better support their understanding of world literature. Here, students will encounter Romanticism in the form of Frankenstein. Not only will students study the literary value of the text, but they will also be tasked with making connections to Shelley's world to determine her ultimate purpose in writing the masterpiece.

Profile of a Graduate Capacities: Analyzing, Citizenship